FIA overthrows Red Bull appeal in fuel case

The International Court of Appeal has today revealed that it will uphold the exclusion of Daniel Ricciardo from the Australian Grand Prix and reject the team's appeal.

On 16 March 2014 the panel of the stewards decided to exclude car N°3 (driver Daniel Ricciardo) from the results of the race as it was found to be not in compliance with the Technical Regulations (the Technical Delegate reported to the Stewards that car N°3 exceeded the required fuel mass flow of 100kg/h).

4 days later, the team lodged an appeal against that decision, claiming it was never in breach of the regulations, even though it decided to ignore the sensor readings and revert to its own fallback system. Going against that, the FIA clarified that its earlier technical directive TD/016-14, issued on March 1, clearly stated that the fuel sensor readings would be the only valid measurement, unless the FIA themselves allowed differently. Additionally, with Red Bull's model being partially based on a software model, the FIA deemed any readings from that system void.

The Court, after having heard the parties and examined their submissions, decided to uphold the Decision of the Stewards by which they decided to exclude Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s car N°3 from the results of the 2014 Australian Grand Prix. The court also did not impose a race ban for the team, despite Mercedes strongly asking for such measure.

Red Bull Racing said in a statement they accept the decision and will now move on with the rest of the season.

"Infiniti Red Bull Racing accepts the ruling of the International Court of Appeal today. We are of course disappointed by the outcome and would not have appealed if we didn’t think we had a very strong case. We always believed we adhered to the technical regulations throughout the 2014 Australian Grand Prix. We are sorry for Daniel (Ricciardo) that he will not be awarded the 18 points from the event, which we think he deserved. We will continue to work very hard to amass as many points as possible for the team, Daniel and Sebastian (Vettel) throughout the season.

"We will now move on from this and concentrate on this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix."